


When Language Fails

by Hecate



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Clones, Consent Issues, F/F, Mating Cycles/In Heat, clones having sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 10:06:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8282036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: Sam forces herself to nod. “I got hands, you know,” she tells Max, and she despises how needy she sounds despite her words. It's in her voice - the hunger to be touched, to be taken, and it doesn't belong there.
“Yeah, but those are never enough,” Max says, and she's right, Sam knows she is right, and it's an awful feeling.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nilozot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nilozot/gifts).



He leaves her a few weeks after they crossed into Canada, a few weeks after the woman who calls herself her sister raised a new flag over a ruined city. He leaves her, and he takes her life along with him. 

Sam had forgotten how it felt to be without it.

It reminds her of Manticore; it's a mission instead of a choice. And she hates it in ways she never did before Manticore fell and she fell in love not long after Manticore's slip and slide. It's a dead life and it's lonely. And Sam, Sam is helpless. For a moment, for the time it takes him to grab his son and start the car, driving away from her. But she is still a soldier beneath loving a man. She knows what she has to do.

Time to return to base. Time to rejoin the troops.

Sam arrives in Terminal City on a Tuesday afternoon, roars into it with a stolen bike and a smile that is all pretence. Somebody thinks she's Max and welcomes her with a smile. But it soon fades away.

“Where is Max?” she asks, and he points her to a building. She almost punches him, tells him not to give his leader away so easily. But Max can take care of herself and Sam doesn't even like her all that much. So she just nods and turns away from him to go looking for the other version of herself.

But it's Max who finds her.

“Why are you here?” she asks Sam. “Shouldn't you be in Canada?”

Sam nods. “I was. It got lonely.”

Max says, “He left you,” and there is anger in her words, anger for Sam, anger in her defence, and it fills Sam up with heat and a new kind of strength.

“He did,” Sam tells Max, and lies, “it's okay.”

Max only laughs. “Sure it is.” 

And maybe Sam likes her just for this moment, likes her enough to smile just for a few seconds before she thinks of the home she lost when White came for her. Her smile wants to fall away then, wants to fade, but she keeps it up, bright and fake.

“Got a place for me to put my bike?” she asks, and means, 'Can I stay?'

Max nods. “Yeah, we keep ours over there,” she replies, and it's crazy to think that Sam knows her enough to hear what Max truly says, but her words sound so much like, 'Yes,' and 'you're family.' And Max might be dumb enough to mean that.

“Thanks,” she says, and she turns the engine back on, guides the bike in the direction Max gave her. 

“So what happened?” Sam asks a familiar looking X5 some hours later. “I've been out of town for the whole thing.”

He shrugs. “Crazy cult people came after us. Max kicked their asses.”

She laughs. “Seems to be her M.O.”

He grins. “It is her M.O. Your sister is pretty badass.”

Sam frowns. “She's not my sister.”

He snorts, raises an eyebrow. “You pretty much look the part.”

And she wants to tell him they're clones, wants to remind him what Manticore did. But she doesn't, swallows the truth like a bitter pill. There will be a war soon, and if this fucked up idea of family helps the others to stay on their feet, she will keep her mouth shut. 

“I look better than her,” she says instead, and smirks at his bark of laughter, walks away with it still echoing after her. She'll let them keep their illusions. She can't win a war with soldiers who have nothing to fight for and no one to look up to, after all.

She settles down, moves the ruins and the people to make space for herself. Goes out into the world with Alec to make the connections that mean power and possibilities to escape when all the fine plans Max is making shatter apart under the weight of reality. 

She kills an X5 because he was sick, too sick, and there was no saving him, only saving the others. Max hits her after, a hard blow that whirls her around, throws her onto the ground. She doesn't fight back. Knows that all the hard decisions, the bitter and unfair ones, will be hers while Max will shine in front of the crowd. 

She can do that. No one she loves is watching anyway. 

She meets Logan again and shakes his hand, watches as his face goes blank and Max's goes hard. Smirks and walks away.

Sam is a soldier. She is what Max isn't willing to see in the mirror. And Sam won't die for her clone's stupid ideals and even stupider dreams. She lost enough because of her, and an escape to Canada wasn't reparation enough for all the pain she lived through in Manticore because Max ran away.

It will never be enough for the life she could have had. 

But that, too, was just a dumb dream, a waste of time, and Sam shakes away the memory of the man she loved and the kid she loved even harder. There is no time for that now, not anymore. There is only a war she is going to win, her purpose, the reason Manticore made her bones and her flesh and her skin.

“Do you miss them?” Max asks her once, twice; and Sam shakes her head. “I thought you would miss them.” 

And Sam shrugs, doesn't tell Max to never speak of her family again. It's a useless demand; it wouldn't change what happened, how Max's fight with White ripped the carefully stitched lies of her life apart.

“I can miss them later,” she says. 

'I won't miss them now,' she thinks, and reminds herself of all the lessons in control Manticore gave them, all the ways they hurt them just to teach them to stay still.

As long as she remembers all that, she can be the soldier she needs to be. 

But of course Manticore made them wrong, made them flawed, and her heat hits her just like it did all the times before. It hits her, and she goes down because it's sharper and stronger than she could ever be. The need that hides beneath her skin, that breaks free now and then, always scared her, scares her now. It's better than her, and Sam wants to crawl away from it, away from her body and all the terrifying ways it's lit up from the inside.

She is so grateful her family never saw her like this.

Max finds her, just like she did on Sam's first day in Terminal City, like she kept on doing through the last weeks, and Sam shudders at the sight of her.

“Go away,” she says, and curls in on herself, pulling her body together so she can't reach for Max. “Go away,” she repeats when Max doesn't leave.

“Shit,” Max says, and her voice sounds warmer than Sam has ever heard it, tighter, too. “I can get someone to help,” she goes on, and Sam hates her for it.

“No,” she says, because she is married, “no,” she repeats because she doesn't want to be with one of the others. Manticore is down, and she refuses to keep on giving her body and her self to their plans and manipulations.

Not even when it feels as if her body burns itself to the ground.

Max sits down next to her, close enough for Sam to feel the echo of her body heat. “Are you sure? I know how bad this can get.”

Sam forces herself to nod. “I got hands, you know,” she tells Max, and she despises how needy she sounds despite her words. It's in her voice - the hunger to be touched, to be taken, and it doesn't belong there.

“Yeah, but those are never enough,” Max says, and she's right, Sam knows she is right, and it's an awful feeling.

But, she thinks with a strange clarity that is just as sharp as her heat, it doesn't have to be someone else's hand touching her. Not with Max around.

“Come here,” she demands, and Max frowns but moves closer. “You can help me,” Sam tells her, and Max jerks away just as Sam reaches for her.

“Don't do that,” Max says. “Don't say that. You're my sister.”

And Sam laughs because she has to, because being made, being fabricated together isn't the same as being a family; it's a parody of it, and Max can't change that with all her pretty words. 

“I'm not,” she says, and she doesn't explain. Max wouldn't understand it anyway. Instead Sam goes on, “And even if I was, it wouldn't matter. Not with this,” and she watches as Max’s face goes hard, goes slack.

And Sam knows she will have her.

“Max,” she says, “help me,” and she watches as Max shatters in front of her.

“Fuck,” Max says, and she sounds fragile and worried. “You don't have it all together right now.”

Sam laughs once more, bitter and wild, her lost control in every bit of the sound. “No, I don't. It doesn't matter. I'll be okay. You will make me okay again.” 

“You don't understand what you're asking,” and Max seems to be scared now. 

And Sam, Sam wants that, wants it suddenly and absolutely. “I do,” she replies, and she grins at Max, “believe me, I really do.” She reaches out then, finally gets to touch Max, and it's heat and hunger and exactly as bad as it has been all the times before.

At least it's not some random X5, not some breeding partner, not a human she ran into at the wrong time. At least it's Max, and Sam tells herself that this is enough to make it meaningless in all the ways that could break her heart and meaningful in all the ways that could push Max of off her little pedestal.

“Okay,” Max says, voice reedy, “okay.” And it's just Sam's touch that did it, that finally reeled her in, and for a moment Sam wonders if Max is in heat herself, that they are similar enough to live in parallel. 

Sam hates the idea.

But she wants Max enough, she needs her enough, to push it away, to push and touch and scratch and pull Max down to her. Somehow, Sam ends up on top. She likes it there.

Max touches her with hands that should be just like hers but aren't, and Sam crashes into a body that bears different scars. Max is soft in unexpected places, smooth skin where a bullet left faint traces on Sam, bruised where Sam isn't. And Sam lets her hands run over it all, covers it up for a few seconds, stroking every difference as if it would mean more than different missions and different bullets. As if they weren't a reminder of Max running and leaving her and all the others behind.

But Sam remembers.

Her touches become rough, her kisses sharp, and Max makes these tiny sounds, like moans strangled and screams swallowed down. And Sam thinks, just for a moment, that she could get used to it all. 

It's a lie, of course it is; it's her heat taking control of more than just her body, tearing at the edges of herself. The feeling won't last but that doesn't mean it's not important in that very moment. And Sam kisses Max, kisses and kisses her, her lips on Max's, on her neck and breasts, on the inside of her thighs, where everything is softer and more real and means this tiny bit more.

When she licks her way inside, it's a different kind of heat, and Sam wonders if she feels and tastes just like that, if this is what her husband felt whenever he went down on her. If he would be able to tell her and Max apart just by touching them. 

She fears that he wouldn't, tells herself that she doesn't care, and digs her fingers into Max's flesh, into everything that could give in under her touch. Touches all the right places, and they are all so very familiar, are all so easy to find. Sam has the map of Max's body after all, it's the same as hers and maybe it's not fair, but it doesn't matter to Sam, not with her heat beating through her body like a drum, like a machine gun; not with Max so easy under her touch. 

Beneath her, Max comes.

“Got you,” Sam thinks, triumph hitting her first and her orgasm moments later.

Just for a moment, nothing matters but the warmth of the body under her and the sound of breath slowing down again, deepening. It doesn't last. Sam refuses to let it go on for as long as it could. Instead, she pulls herself together, and smiles when her body and her desires follow her lead instead of her heat.

“Thank you,” she says, with her skin cool and real again.

“Don't,” Max replies, impossibly serious. “Not for that.”

And Sam looks at her, sees some kind of horror on Max's face, and it could amuse her, could hurt her.

“I shouldn't have done this, I should have gotten someone else to help you,” Max goes on, regret and guilt in every sound and on every part of her. But there is longing, dim and hidden beneath it, like some distant fire; and Sam thinks that might not be a new feeling. It might have been there before she reached out for Max hours ago.

She thinks of the war then, the war Max made for all of them, and she thinks of the way Max is still clinging to mercy at times, to the idea that she should save as many people as she could instead of letting them fall away, use death and sacrifice to win.

Sam was never like that, would never be like that. She has always been good at other things, at tactics and manipulation, at make-believe and building dreams for other people, dreams she could use.

And she can use the light in Max, she can use it to burn Max and their enemies to the ground, just as they all deserve for destroying her family and thinking they're better than what Manticore made.

And she will.


End file.
